Aspirational activism in urban Latin America

由于目前全球一半以上的人口生活在城市，城市治理已成为学者和政策制定者的主要兴趣。该项目将分析拉丁美洲社会行为者的各种新的动员行动，这些行为者受到更好的政府项目和政策的需求的驱动，以改善城市生活质量。基层为谈判和实现集体愿望所作的努力是想象和创造可能的未来的过程。因此，它们正受到越来越多的学术关注，但仍需要进行严格的系统研究。该项目将志向激进主义作为基层实践的一个重要类别，以分析积极分子的物质利益和道德利益之间的相互作用。它将调查两个网络(墨西哥瓜达拉哈拉的Tomala和巴西圣保罗的Rede Nossa Sao Paulo)活动人士如何驾驭集体对城市生活物质和道德改善的渴望。作为一个与严重不平等作斗争的区域，而且由于其威权历史，拉丁美洲体现了在政府机构和其他有影响力的机构之间的包容性公共对话遭到强烈抵制的情况下，促进公民参与所面临的困难。这是一项人类学研究，特别侧重于同时进行的三个过程：(1)积极分子将城市居民的关切结合在一起，表达对更美好未来的渴望的方式；(2)积极分子根据其对包容性治理计划的要求制定决策战略的方式；(3)积极分子持不同政见者的创新表现，以此作为与城市居民和政府官员接触的形式。在日益富裕和持续不平等的背景下，该项目将提供对拉丁美洲正在进行的关于所需未来的谈判的见解，并将成为分析世界各地基层做法的重要工具。

As more than half of the global population now lives in cities, urban governance has become a key interest for scholars and policymakers. This project will analyse a variety of emerging mobilisations by social actors in Latin America who are driven by demands for better government projects and policies so as to improve the quality of urban life. Grassroots efforts to negotiate and achieve collective aspirations constitute a process of imagining and creating possible futures. As such, they are receiving increasing scholarly attention, but still require rigorous systematic investigation. This project introduces aspirational activism as a critical category of grassroots practices in order to analyse the interplay of material and moral interests of activists. It will investigate the way in which activists in two networks (Tomala, in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Rede Nossa Sao Paulo, in Sao Paulo, Brazil) navigate collective aspirations for material and moral improvements in urban life. As a region that grapples with striking levels of inequality, and because of its authoritarian past, Latin America exemplifies the difficulties related to promoting civic engagement when there is a strong resistance to inclusive public dialogues among government institutions and other influential bodies. This is an anthropological study especially focused on three concurrent processes: (1) the way in which activists combine concerns of urban dwellers to articulate aspirations for better futures; (2) the decision-making strategies of activists in light of their demands for inclusive governance schemes; and (3) the innovative performances of dissent by activists as forms of engagement with urban dwellers and government officials. In contexts of increased affluence and persistent inequalities, this project will offer insights into ongoing negotiations over desired futures taking place in Latin America and a critical tool for the analysis of grassroots practices worldwide.